This watchdog blog, by journalist Norman Oder, offers analysis, commentary, and reportage about the $4.9 billion project to build the Barclays Center arena and 16 high-rise buildings at a crucial site in Brooklyn. Dubbed Atlantic Yards by developer Forest City Ratner in 2003, it was rebranded Pacific Park in 2014 after the Chinese government-owned Greenland Group bought a 70% stake in 15 towers. New York State still calls it Atlantic Yards. Contact: AtlanticYardsReport[at]hotmail.com

In a New York Times article Friday headlined An Experimental Bus Route Gets Passengers’ PraiseBuses on an experimental route in the Bronx are moving significantly faster thanks to a series of innovations meant to cut travel time, including having riders pay before they board, transit officials said on Thursday.

But the officials conceded that there would be nothing fast about getting the planned innovations for bus routes in other parts of the city under way — with a delay of up to two years before the next souped-up route is created.

Nostrand Avenue 2012

The Times reported:...Plans now call for bringing Select Bus Service to First and Second Avenues in Manhattan — the busiest route in the city, where the M15 currently runs — and Nostrand Avenue in Brooklyn. But the Manhattan route will not be ready until some time in 2010, according to Ted Orosz, the project manager for the program. The Brooklyn route should get the improved service in 2012.

Why is that? The MTA doesn't have enough of the right buses.

I wrote nearly two years ago that the pilot Nostrand Avenue project might not begin until 2008. Now that route is delayed four years--and a subsequent route on Flatbush Avenue wouldn't arrive until well after 2012.